Subject: Bilateral Relations

The article highlights the factors that make building sustainable partnership with Britain hard for India and suggests the ways to find fresh basis for bilateral relationship.

Need to tap potential for bilateral strategic cooperation

• The long-scheduled summit between Prime Ministers of India and UK will take place with a digital conversation scheduled for Tuesday.
• India and the UK must tap into the enormous potential for bilateral strategic cooperation in the health sector and contributions to the global war on the virus.
• Foreign ministers of India, Japan and Australia would also join this meeting to set the stage for the “Group of Seven Plus Three” physical summit next month hosted by the British Prime Minister.

Challenges in forming a sustainable partnership with Britain

• Few Western powers are as deeply connected to India as Britain.
• While India’s relations with countries as different as the US and France have dramatically improved in recent years, ties with Britain have lagged.
• One reason for this failure has been the colonial prism that has distorted mutual perceptions.
• The bitter legacies of the Partition and Britain’s perceived tilt to Pakistan have long complicated the engagement between Delhi and London.
• Also, the large South Asian diaspora in the UK transmits the internal and intra-regional conflicts in the subcontinent into Britain’s domestic politics.

Finding fresh basis for bilateral relationship

• The two leaders are expected to announce a 10-year roadmap to transform the bilateral relationship that will cover a range of areas.
• Both countries are on the rebound from their respective regional blocs.
• Britain has walked out of the European Union and India has refused to join the China-centred Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
• Although both will continue to trade with their regional partners, they are eager to build new global economic partnerships.
• While remaining a security actor in Europe, Britain is tilting to the Indo-Pacific, where India is a natural ally.
• India needs as wide a coalition as possible to restore a semblance of regional balance.
• Britain could also contribute to the strengthening of India’s domestic defence industrial base.
• The two sides could also expand India’s regional reach through sharing of logistical facilities.
• Both countries are said to be exploring an agreement on “migration and mobility” to facilitate the legal movement of Indians into Britain.
• Both sides are committed to finding common ground on climate change.

Consder the question “What are the factors that introduce friction in the sustainability of India’s bilateral relations with the Britain? Identify the areas in which both the countries can find fresh basis for the bilateral relations?”

Conclusion

If leaders of both the countries succeed in laying down mutually beneficial terms of endearment, future governments might be less tempted to undermine the partnership.

The article discusses the areas in which India-Japan are cooperating and also highlight the areas in which both countries can expand cooperation.

Issues discussed in US-Japan summit

• The discussion focused on their joint security partnership given the need to address China’s recent belligerence in territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas as well as in the Taiwan Strait.
• Both sides affirmed the centrality of their treaty alliance, for long a source of stability in East Asia, and pledged to stand up to China in key regional flashpoints such as the disputed Senkaku Islands and Taiwan.
• Both sides acknowledged the importance of extended deterrence vis-à-vis China through cooperation on cybersecurity and space technology.
• Discussions also touched upon Chinese ambitions to dominate the development of new age technologies such as 5G and quantum computing.
• Given China’s recent pledge to invest a mammoth $1.4 trillion in emerging technologies, Washington and Tokyo scrambled to close the gap by announcing a Competitiveness and Resilience Partnership, or CoRe.
• Both sides have also signalled their intent to pressure on China on violations of intellectual property rights, forced technology transfer, excess capacity issues, and the use of trade-distorting industrial subsidies.
•  Both powers repeatedly emphasised their vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

Issues that need to be discussed in Japan PM’s visit to India

1) Continuation of balancing security policy

• First, one can expect a continuation of the balancing security policy against China that began in 2014.
• Crucially, India’s clashes with China in Galwan have turned public opinion in favour of a more confrontational China policy.
• In just a decade, New Delhi and Tokyo have expanded high-level ministerial and bureaucratic contacts, conducted joint military exercises and concluded military pacts such as the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) logistics agreement.
• Both countries need to affirm support for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and continued willingness to work with the Quad.
• Both countries need to take stock of the state of play in the security relationship while also pushing the envelope on the still nascent cooperation on defence technology and exports.

2) Expanding cooperation in various sectors

• The two powers will look to expand cooperation in sectors such as cybersecurity and emerging technologies.
• Digital research and innovation partnership in technologies from AI and 5G to the Internet of Things and space research has increased between the two countries in the recent past.
• There is a need to deepen cooperation between research institutes and expand funding in light of China’s aforementioned technology investment programme.
• Issues of India’s insistence on data localisation and reluctance to accede to global cybersecurity agreements such as the Budapest Convention may be discussed in the summit.

3) Economic ties

• Economic ties and infrastructure development are likely to be top drawer items on the agendas of New Delhi and Tokyo.
• Though Japan has poured in around $34 billion in investments into the Indian economy, Japan is only India’s 12th largest trading partner.
• Trade volumes between the two stand at just a fifth of the value of India-China bilateral trade.
• India-Japan summit will likely reaffirm Japan’s support for key manufacturing initiatives such as ‘Make in India’ and the Japan Industrial Townships.
• Further, India will be keen to secure continued infrastructure investments in the strategically vital connectivity projects currently under way in the Northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

4) Joint strategy toward key third countries

• In years past, India and Japan have collaborated to build infrastructure in Iran and Africa.
• Both countries have provided vital aid to Myanmar and Sri Lanka and hammer out a common Association of Southeast Asian Nations outreach policy in an attempt to counter China’s growing influence in these corners of the globe.
• However, unlike previous summits, the time has come for India and Japan to take a hard look at reports suggesting that joint infrastructure projects in Africa and Iran have stalled with substantial cost overruns.
•  Tokyo will also likely try to get New Delhi to reverse its decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Consider the question “Changes on the geopolitical horizon offers India-Japan relations multiple avenues to deepen their ties. In light of this, discuss the areas of cooperation and shared concerns for India and Japan.” 

Conclusion

Writing in 2006, Shinzo Abe, expressed his hope in his book that “it would not be a surprise if in another 10 years, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-U.S. and Japan-China relations”. Thus far, India has every reason to believe that Japan’s new Prime Minister is willing to make that dream a reality.

Digital data revolution

• The Industrial Revolution restructured the global manufacturing order to Asia’s disadvantage.
• But in the ‘Digital Data Revolution’, algorithms requiring massive amounts of data determine innovation, the nature of productivity growth, and military power.
• Mobile digital payment interconnections impact society and the international system, having three strategic implications.

3 implications of mobile digital payment interconnections

1) Symbiotic nature of military and civilian system

• Because of the nature and pervasiveness of digital data, military and civilian systems are symbiotic.
• Cybersecurity is national security, and this requires both a new military doctrine and a diplomatic framework.

2) Productivity advantage of data to Asia

• The blurring of distinctions between domestic and foreign policy and the replacement of global rules with issue-based understanding converge with the growth of smartphone-based e-commerce, which ensures that massive amounts of data give a sustained productivity advantage to Asia.

3) India can negotiate new rules as an equal with US and China

• Data streams are now at the centre of global trade and countries’ economic and national power.
• India, thus, has the capacity to negotiate new rules as an equal with the U.S. and China.

How data shaped US-China relations

• Innovation based on data streams has contributed to China’s rise as the second-largest economy and the “near-peer” of the U.S.
• The national security strategy of the U.S. puts more emphasis on diplomacy than military power to resolve conflicts with China, acknowledging that its military allies have complex relationships with Beijing, as it seeks to work with them to close technology gaps.
• China’s technology weakness is the dependence on semiconductors and its powerlessness against U.S. sanctions on banks, 5G and cloud computing companies.
• But China’s digital technology-led capitalism is moving fast to utilise the economic potential of data, pushing the recently launched e-yuan and shaking the dollar-based settlement for global trade.

How global strategic balance will be shaped by data standard

• China has a $53-trillion mobile payments market and it is the global leader in the online transactions arena, controlling over 50% of the global market value.
• India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volume is expected to cross $1 trillion by 2025.
• The U.S., in contrast, lags behind, with only around 30% of consumers using digital means and with the total volume of mobile payments less than $100 billion.
• The global strategic balance will depend on new data standards.
• The U.S., far behind in mobile payments, is falling back on data alliances and sanctions to maintain its global position.

India’s role in digital economy

• With Asia at the centre of the world, major powers see value in relationships with New Delhi.
• India fits into the U.S. frame to provide leverage.
• China wants India, also a digital power, to see it as a partner, not a rival.
• And China remains the largest trading partner of both the U.S. and India despite sanctions and border skirmishes.

Way forward for India

• India, like China, is uncomfortable with treating Western values as universal values and with the U.S. interpretation of Freedom of Navigation rules in others’ territorial waters.
• New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific vision is premised on “ASEAN centrality and the common pursuit of prosperity”.
• The European Union recently acknowledged that the path to its future is through an enhanced influence in the Indo-Pacific, while stressing that the strategy is not “anti-China”.
• The U.S. position in trade, that investment creates new markets, makes it similar to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Conclusion

India alone straddles both U.S. and China-led strategic groupings, providing an equity-based perspective to competing visions. It must be prepared to play a key role in moulding rules for the hyper-connected world, facing off both the U.S. and China to realise its potential of becoming the second-largest economy.